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The Vatican’s child protection board said on Thursday Catholic Church Helping victims of clergy sexual abuse heal is a moral obligation, and has recognized financial reparations and sanctions as necessary remedies for abusers and their supporters.
The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors focused on the issue of reparations in its second annual report. This is often a sensitive topic for the Church, as it has financial, reputational and legal implications for the hierarchy.
The report, compiled with input from dozens of survivors, said the monetary settlement was necessary to provide the medical and other support needed to help victims recover from the trauma of their abuse.
But it said the church owed a far greater debt to victims, the broader church community, etc. GodThe hierarchy must listen to victims and provide them with spiritual and pastoral support. The report said church leaders should apologize for the harm caused, tell victims what they are doing to punish those who harmed them, and what measures they are taking to prevent future abuse.
It states, “The Church has a moral and spiritual obligation to heal the deep wounds caused by sexual violence perpetrated, enabled, perpetrated or concealed by anyone holding a position of authority in the Church.” “The principles of justice and fraternal charity, to which every Christian is called, require not only the acceptance of responsibility but also the implementation of concrete measures of reparation.”
Pope Leo signals commitment to the commission
The report covers 2024, which is the period before Pope Leo XIV is elected. first in history American The Pope has acknowledged that the abuse scandal remains a “crisis” for the Church, and that victims need more than financial compensation to recover.
He has signaled commitment to the commission, which Pope Francis created in 2014 to advise the church on best practices to prevent abuse. In its first decade, the Commission struggled to find its footing Vatican Often resistant to confronting the crisis of abuse and hostile to supporting victim-centered policies.
But recently, the commission has found its way into the Vatican bureaucracy and in July Leo named a new president, French Bishop Thibault Varney, to take over from retiring American Cardinal Sean O’Malley.
A legal process that is traumatic in itself
Significantly, the 2024 report said that the Church’s way of handling abuse cases internally, according to a secretive process that provided no concrete accountability, was traumatizing for the victims themselves.
“We must re-emphasize that the Church’s decades-long pattern of mishandling reports, including discarding, ignoring, shaming, blaming, and stigmatizing victims/survivors, perpetuates trauma as an ongoing harm,” it said.
This was a reference to the church’s dysfunctional way of handling abuse cases according to its in-house canonical code, where the most severe punishment given to a serial rapist priest is equivalent to firing him from his job.
The process is shrouded in secrecy, leaving victims with no right to information about their case other than knowing its outcome, which often comes after a years-long wait. Victims have no real recourse other than to make their stories public, which can be traumatizing.
The report called for sanctions that are “commensurate with the seriousness of the crime and are concrete.” While leniency is a possible outcome for priests who rape children, the Church is often reluctant to completely remove priests. It often imposes lesser sanctions, such as a period of withdrawal from active ministry, even for serious cases of abuse.
Even when a bishop is removed due to irregularities in affairs, the public is only told that he has retired. The report called on the Church to “clearly state the reasons for the resignation or removal.”
Audit of countries and Vatican office
The report provided an audit of child protection policies and practices in more than a dozen countries, as well as two religious orders, a lay movement and a Vatican office.
The findings commended countries where dioceses had actively cooperated with the audit and called out those that did not. The report made recommendations for follow-up action and provided data from other sources, including the United Nations and independent reports, to provide local context on how to address abuses in the secular sector.
The report found that the Vatican’s Missionary Propaganda Office, which is responsible for the church in Africa, Asia and parts of the developing world, does not have the resources to handle abuse cases.
But it said only a “small number of cases” actually reach Rome, revealing that the church in Africa and Asia is decades behind the West in reporting and handling abuse cases, which must be sent to Rome for processing under Vatican law.
The report stated that the Missionary Office had handled only two cases of bishops who mishandled abuse cases, a number that was very low given the size of the area involved.
Such figures show that the Vatican still has a long way to go in parts of the world where abuse, particularly homosexual abuse, remains a taboo subject in wider society and where the Church faces broader issues of war, conflict and poverty.
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